EVENTS

Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan said he disagrees with the BT policy and he’s asked city government’s legal department not to represent BT in court.

“I felt strongly that the city shouldn’t be defending on this issue,” he said Thursday.

Bloomington Public Transportation Corp. operates as a separate municipal corporation, which contracts with the city of Bloomington legal department to provide legal services.

Kruzan said having city legal defend BT in court would amount to “promoting government sanctioned censorship” because the bus service gets city legal’s services at an hourly rate less than that of a private law firm, which is in essence a partial taxpayer subsidy.

Good job, Mayor Kruzan!

Also, a local Bloomington radio station, WFHB, runs a segment called “Voices in the Street” where they ask random people about a certain topic. You can hear the segment on the atheist bus ads here. It was actually pretty refreshing to listen to – the majority of people supported the ads, even if they were religious. Of course, you still got some gems like this:

“Ya’ll atheist people, ya’ll are gonna die in a burning pit of hell, eternal pit of hellfire. Good luck.”

Aaannnddd this is why I don’t want to go to grad school in the Midwest.

My dad just called me up. Apparently our cell phone plan owed him money, and instead of going through the pain of getting rebates and crap mailed to him six weeks from now, he remembered how I mentioned being able to check email from my phone would be cool, so he added mobile internet to my cell phone plan. Now not only can I check my email, but I can check facebook, google things, wikipedia things, update my blog whenever a random thought pops in my head…

Aaaannddd all productivity for this summer has been significantly decreased. Good for you guys, though!

Just be happy I have a qwerty keyboard on my phone. If I ever do make a random phone post, it won’t be in 1337 speak or full of typos.

My dad just called me up. Apparently our cell phone plan owed him money, and instead of going through the pain of getting rebates and crap mailed to him six weeks from now, he remembered how I mentioned being able to check email from my phone would be cool, so he added mobile internet to my cell phone plan. Now not only can I check my email, but I can check facebook, google things, wikipedia things, update my blog whenever a random thought pops in my head…

Aaaannddd all productivity for this summer has been significantly decreased. Good for you guys, though!

Just be happy I have a qwerty keyboard on my phone. If I ever do make a random phone post, it won’t be in 1337 speak or full of typos.

You know, maybe we’re being too hard on all the bus companies in Indiana who keep rejecting the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign‘s ad, “You Can Be Good Without God.” I mean, who are we kidding? That’s pretty controversial! Plenty of people think that concept is ludicrous, and an outright lie. We all know the only reason Christians don’t go around killing, raping, and stealing is because of the reward of heaven and the threat of hell. Ask any Christian what they would do if they were suddenly certain that their was no God, and I’m sure they’ll confidently state that they’ll go on a murderous rampage and take part in drunken orgies (two of the favorite past times of atheists).

That in mind, I figured I’d try to help the bus campaign out by coming up with some uncontroversial advertisement.

“This is What Atheists Look Like (insert photo of smiling family)” Woah, way too scare-tacticy there. Atheists can be anywhere and look like normal people while secretly sacrificing goats in their basement? But who will we know to discriminate against?!

“Atheists Exist” Hmmm, well, not exactly. I mean, atheists really believe in God, they just hate him, right? And all atheists will repent on their death bed, so they eventually won’t be atheists anymore. And how does that little saying go? Atheists don’t believe in God, so God doesn’t believe in atheists? Oh ho ho, so clever!

“Look, We Don’t Want to Convert Religious People, We Just Want Other Atheists to Know That They’re Not Alone so Stop Freaking Out” But atheists are alone because they have God shaped hole in their heart! They’re lacking Jesus! Actually, this ad is still offensive – I bet those atheists are trying to trick you into converting by getting your guard down!

Hmmm, well I’m running out of ideas now, but I’m sure we’ll eventually come up with an ad that’s not controversial. How about “Atheists are Ignorant Deluded Curmudgeons Bent on Sending Your Children to Hell”? That’s not a controversial message in the US, so it’s obviously okay to stick on a bus. Because what matters more – saying the truth, or trying not to offend people?

Today my friend/new roommate (The froomate? Can I refer to him as that from now on?) and I went on a quick Walmart run. He needed ingredients for his stir fry, I needed sports bras and new panties. Random combination between the two of us, I know, but what is Walmart for other than random cheap shit. Anyway, as I have two bras clutched in hand and I’m deep in thought over which panties to pick out, who randomly walks by other than our older, male Associate Dean of Students who is the head of the office for student organizations at Purdue, and personally knows me through my work as President of the Non-Theists. He waves happily and I kind of give a mortified little wave back.

Awwwkwwaaaarrrdddd.

And you know, this is why I hate shopping for underwear. I always have this fear that someone I know who I do not want to know what my panties look like is randomly going to run into me. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive. But you know what, it’s just a tad bit annoying that all the previous times I’ve run into him in innocuous situations he didn’t know me well enough to recognize me, but now that he knows who I am, he finds me looking at panties. Curses!

First, I apologize if you’re getting sick of hearing about the Indiana Atheist bus campaign…but as an atheist in Indiana, it is important to me, so I’m going to keep blogging about it!

While the campaign was having trouble in Bloomington, the following ad had been approved in South Bend, home to Notre Dame:The ads had been approved by Burkhart, the advertising agency in charge of bus ads and were supposed to go up on the TRANSPO bus system on Monday the 11th. This was a strategic move to have the ads circulating when President Obama would be in town to give his commencement speech at Notre Dame.

Key words: supposed to

At first the campaign didn’t worry, because their contract includes a five day leeway for putting up the ads. But now they’ve heard back from Burkhart and there’s a bigger problem. Burkhart has an agreement that they can approve ads for TRANSPO, but if the ad is controversial, they must show it for TRANSPO for their approval. Burkhart, apparently being a company full of reasonable human beings, did not find the add controversial, so they never sent it on to be checked. The general manager of TRANSPO read about the Indiana Atheist Bus drama in Bloomington in the newspaper and put the ads on hold. Why?

“The ad was deemed controversial not because of its content, board Chairman Chip Lewis said, but because of the media attention it got in Bloomington. The bus authority in that city declined to post the ads, which prompted a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming the atheists’ First Amendment rights to free speech were being denied. Lewis, in South Bend, said because of the hoopla downstate, Transpo officials want to be sure about posting the ads.”

Ok, let me get this straight. You were originally fine with the content of the ads. You heard the media was freaking out downstate because a bus agency rejected the ads. Scared, you reject the ads yourself. …Wait, what? How the hell is it logical to avoid controversy then to do the same exact thing that caused the initial controversy? Don’t they realize that their rejection is going to cause the same response?

They’re holding a meeting on Monday to approve or reject the ad. While it will be great for it to be approved, it’s still crappy this is happening. It will miss President Obama and all of his media coverage, which was the #1 reason why the campaign decided to run the ads now instead of when class is in session. Even if they eventually run, it will be significantly less effective. Also, it’s being put up outside of their contractual five day leeway period. Why are they even waiting until Monday, if the drama here is potentially missing Obama? Why can’t they meet Thursday through Saturday (Obama’s speech being on Sunday)? Is the board of directors of a bus company in South Bend, Indiana so freaking important and busy that they can’t organize a meeting until Monday? Really?

Sigh. Will we ever see atheist ads in Indiana? Maybe West Lafayette will end up being the first after all.

The ACLU and Yeshiva University’s Law school filed a lawsuit against Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation, which own the patent rights to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Those are the genes that account for most of the heritable breast cancers, which is about 5-10% of all cases. We’ve discussed the ethics of gene patents in many of my classes, so I’ll be interested in how this case turns out. Usually most of us agree that you shouldn’t be able to patent a gene that you found, and I think this is a good example why:

“Ravicher offered an analogy to describe the plaintiffs’ argument, saying, “It’s like saying if someone removes your eyeball … just because you remove the eyeball and wash it off, that doesn’t make the eyeball patentable. “Now if they create another eyeball out of plastic or metal, then you can patent that.”

…”It’s like trying to patent the moon,” he said. “You didn’t do anything to create it, just discovered something that already existed. You can’t patent things that are publicly available, that anyone can find. You have to create something, make something, do something with the thing.””

Now, if you changed the gene somehow to have a unique function, that’s different. But I really don’t think you should be able to patent a gene just because you found it. It slows scientific research and makes it more difficult for doctors and patients to get affordable testing. Usually the number one argument I’ve heard in my classes for patents is that you spent all that time working on something, you might as well get the credit for it. But as my professor said, if you want credit, publish a peer reviewed paper on it – then everyone will know it was you.

That being said, I don’t really know why the ACLU is being involved. I think their first amendment arguments are kind of weak, and that this can be overturned by patent laws alone. Maybe Yeshiva University’s law school just wanted the monetary help?

So today I went with a couple of friends to the gym. Ohhhhh boy. To give you some perspective, the last time I jogged/ran/did any sort of real physical activity was in my high school freshman gym class six years ago. Well, I played golf competitively through high school, but walking for 5 hours with a heavy bag on your back is only good for so much. It kept my weight down but I was still a weakling.

So, yeah. Today was a little rough. I’m going to predict that I’m going to be very sad when I try to get out of bed tomorrow morning and all I can do is roll onto the floor. My 15 minute walk to lab will be fun. Of course, this is exactly why I need to exercise – because I’m hideously out of shape and I’ve gained about 10 pounds in the last year. I know I’m still within the normal weight range for my height, and I by no means look fat, but there’s this little nagging voice in my head saying “If you don’t get in shape now it’s all downhill from here.” My friend promises me he’ll make a regimen for me that will avoid my boobs. Because really, I’ll be sad if the first thing to go are my D cups instead of my…well, anything else, really.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, my weight gain is perfectly correlated with a decline in sex, and the 3 pounds I’ve lost in the last month are…well, you understand. I guess what I really need is some sexercising. I think that’s a work out regimen we can all agree on.

Intelligent blog posts will be on hiatus until my brain recovers from tonight’s season finale of House. As a Huddy shipper, let me summarize my current thoughts: ARRARHRJHEJBGHBEBLBEBAABRHR!!!!!11!!!1one!!!

Feel free to have spoiler filled discussion in the comments if you watched tonight.

So, I thought I did pretty well on my Physics (Intro Mechanics and Heat for non-phys/chem majors) final exam on Saturday. So I check my grade online, and see that I got a 12/20, which is a 60%. Shocked, I click to see the class distribution of the grades.

The mean was 6/20. The mode was 5/20, which is equivalent to guessing, since it was multiple choice with four choices per question. Only six people (including myself) got a 12/20, three people got 13/20, and no one got higher then that in a class of 390 people.

…

So at what point does it shift from the class failing to the professor failing? Because apparently he didn’t do the greatest job at teaching us. I’m not incapable of learning physics – I got an A+ in it in high school, and we didn’t really learn that much extra stuff in this class.

Thankfully this class is notorious for huge curving, so even though I’m sitting at a 77%, I’ll probably end up having a high A. Woo boy. Can’t wait for Electricity and Magnetism next semester!

Friend: I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have any physics, engineering, or chemistry nerds ;)Me: Har har